Nine - Reminisce
by Nullis
Summary: Life is full of twists and turns. And sometimes Kyu feels that her life is just a huge twist invented by some higher being with the sole purpose of mocking her existence. Mostly humorous. OC STORY WARNING, PRE-HUNTER EXAM **CURRENTLY BEING REWRITTEN**
1. Prelude to the Fall Pt:1

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**Message content: **hey yo click this, totally not a jumpscare. I mean, even if it was are you gonna pussy out?

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_The screen suddenly goes dark. Upon closer inspection the screen only looks like it's gone dead because the video is playing nothing. The pointer hovers over the red cross on the top-right hand corner of the screen._

"Hello!"

_Something that's not all that black pops up onto the screen. No... someone. It's hard to make out dark gray and almost black from black, but the silhouette is vaguely human shaped. The pointer moves away from the cross; at least for now._

"Greetings, salutations, howdy hi hey sup? Oh crud. One sec." _The screen goes from black to white to the normal spectrum of colours. More or less. Staring eye to eye with a child no older than 13 or 14 with messy black hair. _"Heeeey guess who left the light off? Whoop."

"Alrighty! Let's get to business." _The view zooms out to reveal a toothy grin. _"So here's the deal. I know you, you don't know me. Maybe. You might know me from somewhere?"

_The child in the video looks at something behind the view of the camera. It's slightly unsettling. _"You know what? Doesn't matter. See, I'm here to tell you a story. Who doesn't love a good story?"

"But first! Some geography. Did you know that there are 77 volcanoes in Azian? Active, dormant, taking a nap and everything in between. But see, that's what's in the _official_ records." _The kid leans and winks. Or maybe that was them moving the camera closer to their face. Silly, but not a possibility that could be crossed off the list._

"See, they left two interesting ones off the list. Two huge ass volcanoes, crossed off the map. Makes you wonder why, huh?" _It did. Just a little._

"Thank that old fart in charge of the Hunter organisation for that. I mean, _of course_ the Hunter organisation was involved. Anything secret or sneaky or plain distasteful is usually their fault. Wiping the existence of, say, a decently sized island comprised of two volcanoes from records is the least they can do. They actually had a reasonable excuse for doing it though. See, some time ago that I'm gonna leave vague as hell because ooooo sense of mystery and also because I can't really remember the exact years..."

XXX

Some vague years ago on a island not that long a distance from the southeastern shores of Azian with a long-ass name, there were two sister volcanoes. The twin peaks, the nearby villagers called them, never once suspecting that they were fiery pits of death and destruction and too much ash for a Sunday sweeping to get rid of.

Or at least one of them was.

A mere kilometre under the sister on the left bubbled molten andesite and bismuth-

XXX

"Yes, bismuth. Don't ask me, I ain't no geologist. It's kinda like asking why there's a mountain in Yorbian that's actually a giant beehive. Trust me, you do _not_ wanna go there. Where was I? Oh yeah, bismuth."

XXX

And whichever poor bastard couldn't tell his right from his left was pretty screwed. Because the sister on the right; that one was ninety percent less lethal. If the volcano on the left of the island was the angry big sister, then this one was the sleeping beauty. One that had been sleeping six feet underground for five hundred years too long for a prince to come hacking along at those thorns. A few kilometres under that surface was this giant cave. Maybe the former magma chamber. The cool thing about the cave? Bismuth. Every surface was covered in that stuff. Beautiful. A little hard on the feet if you weren't wearing very thick-soled shoes. Barefoot? Worse than walking on crabs. The stepping-stone layered structure of the bismuth formed a natural staircase that descended into lower levels of the volcano. Provided you could find the right corner where the tiny staircase was.

Further into the _depths of the unknown_ (heh) was this maze thing. Like a giant rubix cube, but with a maze inside that looked like one of those house of mirrors you'd find at an amusement park. Pyrite, I think that stuff is called? Yeah, pyrite. That place was _huge_. Like when you stood inside, it wasn't all that impressive but if you'd dug out the whole maze, it was easily four or five times the size of the bismuth chamber.

_Rust and sulfur, silver and black._

There were all these rumors about the maze; about how if you got lost inside for more than a day, then your soul would be trapped inside the mirrors. Several people swore that they'd seen dark shapes that didn't belong in the reflections, eerie whispers... the whole ghostly deal. Legends were that the first to ever be trapped in that shiny maze was some big shot explorer from Yorbian. Surprisingly, he wasn't a Hunter. But then it was a _long_ time ago so it makes sense. The legends are, and I quote: 'Alone, the man set foot into the labyrinth of a thousand faces. For days he wandered around the winding paths of reflections, staring himself into the depths of his soul at every turn until his loneliness and desperation drove him mad. A guide was sent to search for him days later, but not a single trace could be found of the great explorer. Sometimes, if you stay really quiet and really still, you might catch sight of a flickering shadow at the corner of your eye and hear the voice of a broken man, looking for someone to guide him back to the surface.'

XXX

"What a load of bullcrap, right? I bet he just got lost and starved to death. Some explorer he was. Like, who can't spot the red veins of mineral that sorta show you which direction to go? All you need is to know where to look."

XXX

_Run with the blood, count the branches and jump the cuckoo's nest._

If you made it through the maze, where the pyrite thinned and was replaced by gold-flecked basalt. And wildlife. Ferns, weedy bushels, vines. Vines that dangled over a three thousand foot drop that could make you go splat. Unless like any sensible person, you climbed down the vines.

But the coolest part of the volcano was the giant, hollowed out centre. One kilometre tall at its centre, a few hundred wide; it was pretty damn impressive. And yeah, literally the coolest part of the volcano. It's weird that it wasn't warm, considering its location. But then again, you wouldn't expect there to be trees, vines, mushrooms and all of the stuff you'd expect find in an above surface woodland. _Too_ many mushrooms in my opinion. Mushrooms for breakfast, mushrooms for lunch, mushrooms for dinner. Not a very _fun_gi menu, if you get my gist. Bad puns aside, the whole place was like a giant dome-shaped snowglobe with its own ecosystem. A very _glowy_ ecosystem. In a land without a ray of sunlight, it would only make sense if almost everything produced its own bio luminescent light in a weird glowy mutualism. The leaves of the smooth-bark trees that could almost fool you into thinking it was real sunlight shining through the thick canopy, the gecko-lemur hybrids with their reflective markings and the timid birds that could be mistaken for will-o-wisps flicking between the lianas and broad-leaved pines that lit up the surrounding wildlife like streetlights.

The only _boring_ organisms down there were the people. One hundred percent non glowy and disappointingly normal. Arms, legs, only one head and the right number of fingers and toes. If someone told you there were people living down in some volcano forest you'd think 'oh wow I wonder what cool tribal, grass-skirt wearing, cannibal-cavemen-neanderthals there are down there'. Well no, sorry, the people down there were normal as you or me. Maybe a bit less technologically advanced and living in treehouses strung between the branches with walkways like a giant network of spiderwebs.

And that's where our story starts.

XXX

"So who can tell me about the governing system of the Kakin Kingdom?"

Three small, mitten-wrapped hands waved eagerly. One remained firmly propped under the chin of the fourth child, who had the expression of someone stuck in a cage of rowdy monkeys. With the way most of the other children were practically clambering over each other in this small room made from woven branches and shouting different answers, his predicament was fairly close to that mental image.

"A dictatorship!"

"Democracy!"

"Capitalism, capitalism!"

"ANARCHYYYYYY!"

Perhaps bribing the class with surface confectionery as a reward for most questions answered correctly hadn't been the best of ideas. Mila Lecko, assistant teacher and current stand-in instructor for the senior Surface Knowledge class, was already having second thoughts. These five kids wrapped in matching fur jackets and thick winter wear weren't supposed to be her responsibility; she was a junior teacher, not a senior instructor. For good reasons too. Senior classes were notorious for causing trouble. If it weren't for the candy, she couldn't say for sure if they would still be here.

Mila tried not to let those thoughts linger. Willing or not, she had a class to teach. "Not quite," she said, "Here's a clue. What sort of system has a king? Kuusi?"

The others glared at the one student who was, at this point, the only student who remained seated on the straw mat. Kuusi looked up, still wearing the trapped-in-a-monkey-cage expression of pained boredom. He shrugged. "A kingdom?"

One of the girls giggled while a boy with a gecko-lemur perched on his shoulder guffawed and said, "A kingdom isn't a governing system, silly!" The gecko-lemur chattered in agreement.

"He's not wrong, technically speaking," one of the smaller boys nudged a pair of (fake) glasses up the bridge of his nose. "A kingdom could be defined as a realm ruled by a king." Kuusi rolled his eyes. Just Ternio being a smartass, like usual. As the oldest of the class, his act of intellectual maturity made him look like the most _immature_ of them all.

The girl who had giggled at Kuusi's bored reply earlier, Fyra, mumbled in a quiet voice as she tugged nervously at her skirt, "Ternio... Miss Lecko asked about governing systems..."

Ternio, on his part, just pretended not to hear Fyra's little correction while the other children held in their laughter. Mila sighed. "Well? What do you think, Kyu?"

Kyu, one of the bigger children who had been whispering something to her partner in crime and best friend, Kuusi, when their teacher called her name. "Huh?"

"The governing system of Kakin?" Mila felt her eyebrows rising. Of all the children, she'd least expected Kyu to form a friendship with Kuusi, and to let that friendship distract her in class. Kuusi's own disinterest was partly to blame, she supposed.

"Uh..." Kyu's gaze moved to somewhere behind behind her elbow. Where some would rub their chins or twirl their beards, this was her equivalent of a thinking habit. "A uh... hire-archee?"

Gecko pet boy, Cinco, made a face. "What's a hire-archee?" Fyra looked at Ternio, who looked away. He had no idea either. The person who'd suggested the term in the first place looked equal parts embarrassed and confused. For a good reason, too. Kuusi muttered something under his breath.

Mila, on her part, just tried not to smile. "Do you mean a hierarchy?"

"Yeah...?" Clearly she still had no idea of her blunder. Cinco laughed uproariously while Ternio smirked in amusement. Fyra laughed along hesitantly and flinched when she earned a glare from Kuusi.

"_I told you, idiot!_" he hissed to his not-so-phonetically-adept friend under his breath.

"_How was I supposed to know?!" _Kyu hissed right back. "_I just read it like how it's written in the books."_

The two friends glared daggers at each other while Mila covered her growing smile. Those two weren't nearly as quiet as they thought they were. "It's alright. Making mistakes is part of learning."

"_Dumb_ mistakes," added Cinco. When Kyu turned her withering glare to him, he gulped and pretended to be preoccupied with stroking Monki, his gecko-lemur.

Seeing an argument about to break out (for the umpteenth time between these two in particular) she quickly brought out the promised bag of goodies. Instantly all eyes were on her; or rather, the small cloth pouch. Even Kuusi had his eyes on it, despite his uninterested facade.

"Since everyone more or less made an effort to answer the quiz questions today, it's only fair that everyone gets a reward."She emptied the contents of the pouch onto the straw mat before any of them could make a mad grab for the whole thing. Boiled sweets, wrapped in thin plastic and pretty much of equal value to solid gold to the children, tumbled out. "And remember; equal shares are always fair."

Ternio pointed out that in surface countries, good were distributed based on the amount of work each individual had accomplished. An elbow in the side from Kyu shut him up, and the candy was distributed sort of evenly between the five. Cinco had his complaints when Fyra received one more candy than the rest of them (she blushed the deepest shades of pink upon Ternio's insistence) but Kuusi was just as good as Kyu with a sneaky elbow out of Miss Lecko's sight.

One thousand, two hundred and forty-eight metres above them, the shadows in the mirrors stirred.


	2. UPDATE

Yo

It's been a while since I've updated, I know. But thank you all for the reviews that you've posted so far! They've been encouraging and helpful- yes, even you, Mr. Guest-who-doesn't-like-the-story.

The reason behind the lack of updates is the usual; studies, unplanned events, _life in general._ But now that I've finally found the time to come back to this fic almost two years after the first cringeworthy chapter, it's not going to be to post the next equally cringeworthy chapter (which I found saved in an old hardrive somewhere).

Instead I'll be doing a rewrite of both fics. Before any of you guys start complaining about liking the old fic better, I'm going to tell you now that this story is _old_ and pretty badly plotted out (hah, like the new one won't be). A lotta things are going right out the window in order for the improvements to come in the front door. And trust me, there're going to a LOT of changes.

So enjoy the ride from here on out, guys, girls and everyone in between. The rewrite of Chapter 1 is already out so go check that out if you want to see some _actual background development._ Ha.

All rewritten chapters will now have chapter titles instead of the generic 'Chapter 1, Chapter 2' nonsense. I'll also make a new announcement post every time that happens so if you do want to read the rewritten chapters, you won't have to constantly check for those renamings.

So that's about it. Expect semi-regular updates from here on out?

BITE ME IF I GET SOMETHING WRONG  
(actually just message me or include what needs to be fixed in a review and I'll get to it asap)


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